Portfolio Worker or Busy Fool?

Are you like me, and work for a number of different clients, doing different things for each? I like my work to be varied, and I tend to only take on work that I think I’m going to enjoy. And on the whole, I have a whale of a time – it almost seems wrong to take money for having so much fun (in case any of my clients read this, I said almost – I got over that particular hang-up!).

I’ve found that I need to exercise a bit of discipline in what I take on. I judge everything by two main criteria: will I enjoy this, and will I make any money at it? If the answer to both of those questions isn’t at least a ‘definite maybe’, I’ll pass. Part of the “will I make any money” dimension is judging whether I’ll add any value to my clients – I firmly believe that I’ll only make sustainable money doing something if my clients are getting greater value than the money I’m making

But when I first started out, I found myself having a go at a wide variety of things, just because someone asked me too. Some I got paid to do, some were results-only. Some worked, others failed dismally, and just ended up taking up vast amounts of my time with very little return – except maybe the learning that I shouldn’t have done them in the first place.

These days, I love being a portfolio worker. I absolutely hated being a busy fool.

I’d be interested to find out how others decide which work to take on?